#eprdctn on Twitter: An Essential Resource

When I first started making ebooks, I found the Twitter feed #eprdctn (either from Anne-Marie Concepción’s Lynda course on Indesign to EPUB or from Liz Castro’s EPUB Straight to the Point). I signed up for Twitter, got my own handle (@BNGObooks), found a friend to follow me, and I was off.

Now, hundreds of followers and followings later, I’m still on Twitter daily, with a bookmark for the #eprdctn gathering.

What happens there? Simply, folks drop in, ask a question, find an answer, blow off steam, share a discovery, make bad jokes, make good jokes. You post a question and, if you’re lucky, get a response quickly. It’s also common to get a response a day later; folks like to go back through the feed and see what they’ve missed if they’ve been away for a day.

What kinds of questions? PDF, InDesign, Illustrator, Word to EPUB and MOBI; reflowable vs. fixed-layout; semantic markup; accessibility; image + caption issues; getting onto retailers’ bookshelves; almost anything you can think of. I say almost because I expect there are lots of dilemmas noone has run across yet.

And, it’s also great for some company. Many developers work as independent consultants without the benefit of in-office colleagues dropping by for a chat, so it’s a break from the solitude of a small office.

#eprdctn Hour: Tweet There or Be Square

Every Wednesday at 11 AM (EDT), there is an hour of more intense conversation. Sometimes it’s free-form, sometimes it’s structured around a topic. Sometimes it’s hosted by an ebook developer with a particular subject in mind, sometimes not. Whatever a given week’s format, I always come away with valuable info.

Some of us have recently begun signing up to host an hour, with a topic chosen in advance.

This week, Laura Brady brought up job opportunites for ebook developers, from both the hiring and the wanting-to-be-hired perspectives. It was a lively hour—my Twitter feed ran faster than I could read it at some points.